no, harry reid is not a more powerful guy. but i do agree in the end, if the president will stop demagoguing, and if he'll stop running a presidential campaign, a permanent campaign that david brooks is talking about, al, i think you're right. i think the president, at the end, may actually make some decisions that will upset his own base, change cpi, on hopefully -- hopefully he won't take paul krugman's position and say we'll worry about medicare in 2025 when it starts to melt down. hopefully he'll be a little more responsible than that. i think he will. >> yes. >> but the problem, i think, goes back to mika's point. in all of the attacking the president, he has a plan on the table. you can say is demagoguing. the revenues that he's putting on the table from the taxes add up. the republicans have just come back saying, we're not putting revenue on the table, but they have not come up with a counterproposal. they haven't even shown up. the problem with the david brooks problem is the sequence of events. we set up sequestratio